Good Luck, Miss Wycoff

(1979)

by Greg Wroblewski, aka Uncle Scoopy,
aka Johnny Web

This
social drama was considered so daring in 1979 that
it required 27 minutes of cuts to get an R rating
from the MPAA. That means that a film which was
intended to run 106 minutes actually ran 79 in
some versions, thus removing many of the necessary
logical transitions between scenes and rendering
the plot nonsensical. Oddly enough, the first hour
of the uncut version could have been rated PG in
1979, when there was no PG-13 rating. It is not
until the midway point that the film became edgy.

It's
1954. A virginal high school Latin teacher in a
small Kansas town starts to have an emotional
breakdown. She starts crying for no reason, and
she exhibits other signs of severe depression,
some of which are physically dangerous, such as
attacking her mirror violently. Her doctor (ol'
Napoleon Solo, the man from UNCLE himself) reveals
her to be the victim of premature menopause.

"But
I'm only 35," she retorts.

"Yeah,
that's why they use the word 'premature,'" he
answers bluntly.

The
Doc From UNCLE tells her that she needs to start
getting enough sleep and, more important by far,
she needs to get laid. He hedges his diagnosis by
saying, "Of course, I might be wrong. Talk to a
shrink."

The
shrink convinces her to take charge of her life,
so she goes on the prowl in her own spinsterly
way. The guy who transports her to her shrink in
Wichita hits on her. She demurs because he's
married, but slowly changes her mind because he
seems to be a sincere guy who never lied to her
about his situation. By the time she decides to
get herself some bus driver dick, the motorman has
moved on to another part of the country, having
left his wife. Opportunity squandered.

Her
next attempt at a meaningful sexual relationship
turns out to be disastrous, as the object of her
desires turns out to be an accused communist (this
is the era when Tail Gunner Joe ran roughshod over
America's liberal establishment), but that's the
least of her worries. More relevant to her own
situation, he also turns out to have no interest
in girls.

55
minutes of the film have now passed and things are
looking bad for her.

But
they get worse.

The
film takes a sudden shift in tone and we now come
to the part that qualified the uncut version for a
possible X rating.

She
is subjected to the ultimate humiliation of being
raped by the handsome black man who cleans her
classroom. She tells nobody, and is such a
desperate, self-destructive person that she
actually makes herself available to the rapist. At
first that almost seems like a decent idea,
because their second sexual encounter is tender
and romantic, but she soon discovers that the man
is only manipulating her to gain control. He hates
all white people, and takes out his anger in
subsequent encounters by humiliating her and even
hurting her physically.
During one of their trysts, the man's anger turns
fiery and he takes her brutally from behind while
shoving her breasts into a scalding-hot radiator
in her own classroom after hours. She screams in
agony, and two students respond to the situation,
only to find their presumably innocent schoolmarm
stark naked and having sex with a very sexy young
black man.

The
story then takes kind of a weird twist. Had I been
one of those two students, given the severe burns
on her body and the screams the boys had heard, I
would have assumed that Miss Wycoff was being
raped, but they make no such assumption. They
simply walk away, and eventually tell everyone in
the small town that she is a promiscuous woman who
prefers dark meat. This, of course, is not the
path for her to make friends and enhance her
reputation in a small Midwestern town in 1954, so
she ends up losing her friends, her apartment, and
her job. She considers suicide, but ends up doing
something even worse - moving to New Jersey.

To
somebody watching this film in 2015, the
motivations and reactions of the characters are
impossible to understand, and every situation
seems melodramatic beyond the level of
credibility, so that the entire project seems like
a corny made-for-TV film on the Oxygen Network, if
such films could have graphic sex scenes. On the
other hand, perhaps the characterizations
accurately reflected the various attitudes toward
sex and race that people had in 1954. It does seem
to have a Tennessee Williams kind of tone to it
and it was, after all, written by William Inge,
the noteworthy playwright and novelist who, in a
famous play and movie, Picnic, so accurately and
poignantly captured the difference between the
trap of humdrum reality and the baseless optimism
of some Midwestern lives in the 50s.

Perhaps.

But
I don't recommend it.

NUDITY
REPORT

The rape and humiliation scenes
in this movie are brutal and nearly
impossible to watch without flinching,
especially when the teacher gets thrust
into the radiator.

There is full frontal and rear
nudity from Anne Heywood as Miss Wycoff,
although the rear exposure is very brief.

On the male side, super hunk
John Lafayette, with a six pack that seems
to have been sculpted, shows the full
monty as her rapist.

The Critics Vote ...

Kevin
Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote:
"Perfectly dreadful. Polly Platt's script
and Marvin Chomsky's direction compound
each other disastrously. Good Luck, Miss
Wyckoff expresses familiar truths about
the painful conflict of the individual and
society—but with a persistent sense of
falseness and an utter lack of style." Full review.

TV
Guide was equally scornful: "A
normally fine cast is utterly wasted in
this pile of racist garbage, which is
only further marred by Chomsky's
grotesque television style. Notsurprisingly, the film never
found a distributor, was peddled by the
producers, and ended up being known as
THE SIN in order to reach a less
discriminating market."

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5
usually indicates a level of excellence
equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates
lukewarm watchability, comparable to
approximately two and a half stars from the
critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind
of material, equivalent to about a two star
rating from the critics, or a C- from our
system. Films rated below five are generally
awful even if you like that kind of film -
this score is roughly equivalent to one and
a half stars from the critics or a D on our
scale. (Possibly even less, depending on
just how far below five the rating is.

Our own guideline:

A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the
genre.

B means the movie is not good
enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if
you have an open mind about this type of
film. Any film rated B- or better is
recommended for just about anyone. In
order to rate at least a B-, a film
should be both a critical and commercial
success. Exceptions: (1) We will
occasionally rate a film B- with good
popular acceptance and bad reviews, if
we believe the critics have severely
underrated a film. (2) We may also
assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed
film which did not do well at the box
office if we feel that the fault lay in
the marketing of the film, and that the
film might have been a hit if people had
known about it. (Like, for example, The
Waterdance.)

C+ means it has no crossover
appeal, but will be considered excellent
by people who enjoy this kind of movie.
If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and
an A are indistinguishable to you.

C means it is competent, but
uninspired genre fare. People who like
this kind of movie will think it
satisfactory. Others probably will not.

C- indicates that it we found it
to be a poor movie, but genre addicts
find it watchable. Any film rated C- or
better is recommended for fans of that
type of film, but films with this rating
should be approached with caution by
mainstream audiences, who may find them
incompetent or repulsive or both. If
this is NOT your kind of movie, a C- and
an E are indistinguishable to you.

D means you'll hate it even if
you like the genre. We don't score films
below C- that often, because we like
movies and we think that most of them
have at least a solid niche audience.
Now that you know that, you should have
serious reservations about any movie
below C-. Films rated below C- generally
have both bad reviews and poor popular
acceptance.

E means that you'll hate it
even if you love the genre.

F
means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but
technically inept as well.

Based on
this description, this film is a D, a
clumsy movie which seems false and it
interesting only as a curio of a different
era of filmmaking within a society with
different attitudes.